The Flaming Lips-The Terror (2013)
Artist: The Flaming Lips
Title: The Terror
Label: Warner Bros./Lovely Sorts of Death Records
Format: CD
Cat #: 534627-2
Year of Release: 2013
Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 2013
Listed Condition: VG+/VG+
Sell Date: 7/11/25
Sell Price: $4.33
Discogs Last Sold: 6/25/25 NM/NM $9.99
Low: $3.50
Median: $4.27
Average: $5.53
High: $9.99
Current low price: $3.69
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 13
Have/Want: 851/99
Where Steubenville, OH
Time it took to sell: 4 years
Where and When Bought: The Fountain Collection
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B
Sad To See It Go: No
As I listened a second pass to The Terror, the 13th studio record from the Flaming Lips, I found myself with very little to say about it. The words "an ambient work" sternly reverberated in the recesses of my brain and very little else. Would now be the time to cheat and get a ChatGPT(TM) overview? I don't like to do that when I crank these out, but better that than looking at a 2013 Pitchfork review.
We find, almost universally after doing that little exercise that the critics regarded this album that debuted on Billboard at #43 as uncommercial and dark. Even the Dean in his B+ overview cited an embrace of despair. Well, clearly there was a press release I didn't see since I didn''t know or care that this was Wayne Coyne's "Divorce Record." It didn't strike me as particularly uncommercial...or commercial for that matter.
The Terror struck me as the sound of a crowded room staring blankly at a stage and politely applauding when appropriate while thinking of something else. To me, it sounded like a soundscape record continuing the trend of what they always were doing of late. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing bad or particularly excellent. First the band stripped much of the guitars and "band" aesthetic as focal point. Then they stripped the jokey art obscurism that governed most of their career to this point, particularly the Warner Bros years. Now in 2013 we are left with a sort of Pink Floyd thing with modern electronics. Sometimes a watery guitar emerges, distortion and all. I should like it more than I do.
I will say putting a little more volume on the album on the third listen after the melodies have subliminally sunk in helped a little. Christgau also noted this album was more like an art installation than a set of songs and I can now fully imagine this playing in a very clean loft space with white walls and flickering monitors with well-manicured attendees not getting past that first glass of white wine and never cutting into the wax encased cheese.
How does it feel to feel....nothing?
FOR FURTHER REVIEW
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